The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados, a place where every aspect of cartography can be admired, examined, learned, and discussed. Our membership consists of professional designers and artists, hobbyists, and amateurs—all are welcome to join and participate in the quest for cartographic skill and knowledge.

Although we specialize in maps of fictional realms, as commonly used in both novels and games (both tabletop and role-playing), many Guild members are also proficient in historical and contemporary maps. Likewise, we specialize in computer-assisted cartography (such as with GIMP, Adobe apps, Campaign Cartographer, Dundjinni, etc.), although many members here also have interest in maps drafted by hand.

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Testing... *thmph* *thmph*

Uh. Hello. I, uh, already posted in another forum. Guess I'm doing things a bit out of order. Maps are interesting to me and, more importantly, to players. I found a tutorial about using clouds to make random coastlines over at Zombie Nirvana games and someone on another forum pointed me this way when I brought it up. So far, I've had some fun playing with that concept. I hope to pick up some more tricks. I guess I'll also have to plan a game that will let me use the more artistic style of maps that I find fun to make. So, uh... yeah. Hi.

Using clouds for coatslines. I haven't thought about that for almost 25 years. I remember many a night/day as my family traveled back and forth across Canada on vacation and looking at the clouds thinking what cool D&D worlds they would make as coastlines.

Using clouds for coatslines. I haven't thought about that for almost 25 years. I remember many a night/day as my family traveled back and forth across Canada on vacation and looking at the clouds thinking what cool D&D worlds they would make as coastlines.

That deserves some REP for bringing back fond memories.

Okay! That does it! I'm taking my camera outside and collecting some heightfields.

Hahaha on the clouds for coastlines bit from the others. 117 means PS's clouds filter as the basis for random coastlines. But then, you knew that, right?

You think I'm kiddin' huh? Well I did actually go out and snap a couple of shots of the sky over beautiful Eugene, Oregon. The autofocus didn't capture the detailed tendrils, but it was still a medium decent shot. I stuck it in photoshop, reduced it to grayscale, healing-brushed out some bad pixels, and used a small gaussian blur to kill some graininess(the light sucked, and I didn't want to do a 3 second exposure freehand), and used levels to get the full gamut. Other than that, I didn't really modify it significantly before I sucked it into Bryce for this overhead shot.